Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro
Responding to growing accusations that he is damaging the Republican Party by scoffing at widely held scientific principles, most directly in regard to climate change, Rick Perry explained, “The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said, ‘Here is the fact.’ Galileo got outvoted for a spell.”
To that point, Perry is correct. When Galileo theorized that the earth revolved around the sun, he was accused of heresy by the ruling papal faction, sentenced to house arrest for life, and barred from ever conducting scientific research again.
“After years of further investigation and the collection of actual evidence, they found out the earth did move around the sun,” Perry said. “But by that time, scholars’d had more time to study and more proof to go on. If Galileo had conducted better research, he may have been freed. But just trying to shake up society with scare tactics and crazy ravings is dangerous. Honestly, they went soft on him. He woulda been dealt a lot dirty down here in Texas, if you know what I mean.”
Perry clarified that his approach to science would be equally conservative: “It takes a heck of a long time for a theory to bear fruit. This climate change stuff is still too new. Maybe it’s true and maybe it ain’t. Got a lot a gaps in it. Just like all this new DHS stuff. It’s still too fresh to tell if it’s really gonna send terrorists packing. Of if criminalizing hand lotion is gonna keep al Qaeda off the airplanes. That’s why I’m proposing a counter-terrorism model that we all know works. It’s in the darn history books. It’s been around since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Now that’s science I can believe in.”
With that, Perry unveiled the Counter-terrorism Crucible, which he urged members of Congress to consider passing before they become mired in the political distraction of President Obama’s rhetorical and mostly hollow jobs plan.
Enhanced Interrogation, American Style
Between February 1692 and May 1693, a series of hearings were held in colonial Massachusetts to prosecute people accused of high treason and internal terrorism in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex. The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned. All 26 who went to trial were convicted. The four sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693 produced only three convictions in the 31 trials it conducted. Nineteen of the accused, 14 women and six men, were executed. Given the large ratio of those accused to those found guilty and put to death, Perry found the historical precedent to have presented a fair, just and efficient system of counter-terrorism. In fact, Perry mentioned, the process closely mirrored that of the current Texas penal system.
Using both the original practices of America’s first generations and those of modern day Texas, Perry crafted his own multi-pronged approach.
Terrorist Cake
Enhanced interrogation techniques, according to numerous experts, offer dubious records of producing meaningful intelligence. Perry believes that more scientific methods can be applied to reveal terrorists without employing tactics such as waterboarding, which cause suspects to confess anything, whether true or not, to end the torture.
Perry’s Counter-terrorism Crucible endorses the making of a Terrorist Cake as the first step in identifying terrorists. The cake, made from rye meal and urine from the suspected terrorists, is fed to a dog. When the dog eats the cake, a true terrorist will suffer injury because invisible particles of his terrorism remain in the urine, thereby linking his soul directly to the dog. If the suspect cries out in pain when the dog gnashes the cake, he can be prosecuted as a terrorist.
Touch Test
One of the most successful interrogation techniques of 1692 was the Touch Test. The interrogation consisted of a suspected terrorist touching a community member of unimpeachable purity. The prevailing science of the day established that the dark soul of a terrorist could manifest physically and be transmitted by fingertip. If the subject went into fits after being touched, the terrorist was taken away and executed.
Capitalizing on the proven track record of this test, Perry’s model exposes the child of a dyed-in-the-wool, patriotic, Christian American to a suspected terrorist.
“We did a lot of trial and error on this one,” Perry explained. “We brought in a bunch of different Americans and had them touch the children. In nearly every instance, the children were unaffected. However, when exposed to the touch of a Middle Eastern person in Muslim attire, homemade bombs and gun belts, the children broke out into sobs and visible fits. Proof of terrorism in the touch.”
Trial by Water
Admittedly used in only extreme instances, the final method is considered the most effective. In Trial by Water, a suspected terrorist is heavily weighted and then thrown into a deep pool. One of two outcomes is possible. The terrorist will attempt to be pulled from the pool in order to confess, or the terrorist will drown.
“But here’s the thing,” Perry emphasized. “If the suspect drowns and floats to the top, then we know he was innocent. Greater rewards therefore await him in the Kingdom of Heaven, and we sleep soundly in the knowledge that we have released his soul to a better hereafter. But if that suspect drops to the bottom, then we know he was an unholy enemy of the state, in league with the forces of the devil. And he ain’t gonna be blowing up no more buildings in our country.”
Perry said his researchers were also exploring an alternative method using fire. Testing is still under way, but the operative theory suggests that an innocent suspect will burn to death and enter God’s embrace. A terrorist, however, will resist the flames and be promptly executed by a firing squad on hand.
(c) 2011. All stories are works of satire and parody. See disclaimers.